Many electronic devices include security features to prevent unauthorized access. For example, an electronic device can include a biometric sensor configured to establish a user's identity by determining whether obtained biometric data matches known biometric data of an authorized user. A fingerprint imaging system is one example of a biometric sensor.
In many cases, the performance of a biometric sensor may be affected by the precision with which biometric data can be detected. Although increased precision may lead to improved security for the electronic device, it may also result in a physical reduction in the size of one or more sensing components of the sensor. For example, a high-precision fingerprint imaging system may require smaller imaging sensors than a low-precision imaging system.
The quality of a signal obtained from physically smaller sensing components is often negatively affected by the components' smaller size. For example, small imaging sensors may detect less image information than large imaging sensors, generating lower-amplitude signals that may be more sensitive to interference. In other cases, small sensing components may be more susceptible to signal distortion from environmental conditions (e.g., temperature, pressure, humidity, and so on) than larger sensing components.
To account for the lower signal quality that may be associated with smaller sensing components, many biometric sensors may require advanced signal processing capability to mitigate effects of noise and/or interference, which may undesirably increase power consumption and/or processing delays of the system. In addition, smaller sensing components that are more densely arranged may often require more intricate and/or complex circuitry for operating each individual sensing component. As a result, high-precision biometric sensors may be difficult to include within small form factor electronic devices having limited power and processing resources.